Alena Vranova, founding father of SatoshiLabs, warned of the rise in wrench assaults, bodily assaults and abductions carried out towards Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto holders in an try to steal their non-public keys.
“Each week, there’s a Bitcoiner, at the very least one on the planet, who will get kidnapped, tortured, extorted, and typically even worse,” Vranova instructed the viewers on the Baltic Honeybadger 2025 convention in Riga, Latvia.
She warned that even small crypto traders will be on the radar of violent criminals searching for a goal. She added:
“What appears to be an issue just for Bitcoin OGs will not be actually the case. We’ve seen instances of kidnappings for as little as $6,000 value of crypto, and we have now seen folks murdered for $50,000 in crypto.”
The rise in wrench assaults towards crypto holders is a disturbing pattern, with bodily assaults towards Bitcoiners in 2025 on observe to double the worst 12 months on file, prompting private security countermeasures from traders, builders, and business executives.
Associated: Wrench assaults drive crypto traders to centralized custodians
Centralized knowledge leaks enlarge the wrench assault risk
Information leaks from centralized crypto exchanges, which gather delicate consumer info below know-your-customer (KYC) necessities, and different centralized software program suppliers who gather shopper knowledge, enable violent criminals to focus on crypto holders and their households.
“We at the moment have greater than 80 million Bitcoiner and crypto consumer identities leaked on-line; 2.2 million out of these comprise house addresses,” Vranova mentioned.
These assaults are correlated with Bitcoin costs, and the frequency of the assaults rises throughout bull markets, she added.
In Might, crypto trade Coinbase disclosed a knowledge breach that leaked the data of a small subset of Coinbase prospects, which included house addresses and different figuring out info.
In June, a report from Cybernews uncovered databases containing greater than 16 billion leaked consumer login credentials from platforms like Apple, Fb, and Google.
The password leak negatively impacts crypto holders, who will now be topic to elevated phishing, social engineering, hacking, id theft, and different varieties of focused scams designed to steal consumer knowledge and funds.
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